Why is Keyword Research So Important?

When it comes to setting up an online business, keyword research is absolutely crucial. If you get it wrong, you could end up wasting months of your time, and a huge amount of money, simply by targeting a keyword that no one's typing in, or perhaps one that's just too competitive and gives you no chance of ranking for.

When I started out as a freelance copywriter, I sat down for a good few hours to think about the keywords I wanted to target, and utilised Google's Keyword Tool to analyse the competition and the number of monthly searches. It's a fantastic tool and completely free for anyone to use, so if you're thinking of starting up an online business, this is the place to go before you do anything else.

The search term "freelance copywriter" had 3,600 global monthly searches, "website copywriter" came back with 1,600, "SEO copywriter" returned 2,900 and "copywriting services" 2,900 as well, so all of these keywords showed a decent level of interest.

Enough people were typing in these keywords to make this a worthwhile business venture, so I went for it…

I was going to be a professional copywriter!

I chose these four keywords and then optimised separate pages for each of them. This is because Google and the other search engines rank PAGES, rather than websites as a whole. So within one website, you can rank for multiple keywords.

To give you an example, I optimised my home page for the keyword "freelance copywriter", my website copywriting page for "website copywriter", my SEO copywriting page for SEO copywriter, and so on, until all of my major keywords were covered.

Today, I'm ranking between pages 2-4 for these keywords, and rising all the time. And as a result, I'm getting a number of enquiries from my website, which I'm hoping will increase as I get closer to page one.

But the crucial point to mention is that this was only made possible because I conducted keyword research into the niche I was entering.

So if you've got a great idea for a business and you're thinking of setting up a website, be sure to use Google's Keyword Tool to find out what people are searching for.

You'll be glad you did!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/why-is-keyword-research-so-important-5110828.html

Nick Cobb is a freelance copywriter, online marketing consultant and the founder and Managing Director of Write For You Ltd, a copywriting agency based in London, England. His principal website; My Freelance Copywriter provides a wide range of copywriting services to domestic and international businesses, both large and small.

Labels: keyword research, keywords, seo

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